Since then they’ve been plucked from obscurity (if you can call 4 million views on Youtube obscurity) and snapped up by evil corporations to do their bidding in order to increase obesity and tooth decay across the world. I say world but I’ve never seen this ad in the UK so I guess it’s only for the eyes and pockets of N. America:

Ah well who can blame them, they’ve hit the big time even if it is on the back of a Coke and McDonalds advertising campaign. What’s really cool about their vids (asides from the fact that they features so many tees) is that they’re relying on old school animation techniques, slavishly taking photos of every t-shirt and effect in stop-frame motion. Yes, every t-shirt in each of these videos is real, there’s no Photoshop trickery involved. In fact they must have made a tidy bundle of money or at least a whole heap of free PR for their local t-shirt printers. If you want to see how they did it then take a look at this video:

I love t-shirt videos, if you do too then I suggest you subscribe to Rhett & Link’s Youtube Channel!

Okay you have all heard of Twitter right? No? Well then you must be living on another planet! Twitter is a fabulous way of getting an enormous fan base fast, I use it for my graffiti site and will be promoting it in a big way very soon! The thing is most ideas for promoting Twitter are rather expensive and so I’ve joined Tweeter Getter and if you know what’s good for you you will too!

If you explode your following on Twitter you can almost guarantee it will increase the popularity of your t-shirt blog, site, store or in fact any kind of blog or site you can imagine!

Hope on board here and gather up to almost 20,000 Twitter followers for free!

You don’t have to sign up to vote but AUB will need an email addy, of course they say it’s to make sure there’s only one vote per person but:-

If you had a 100 different emails you could probably cheat.
I.P address tracking is a far better way of preventing cheating.
It’s a sneaky way of building up their mailing list, still can’t blame them I suppose.

Anyway it’s a great chance for your favourite t-shirt brand to get a heap load of exposure, well I say that but looking at AUB’s traffic statistics right now they’d all get around ten times more with a review on our blog but hey, the more the merrier. (Yes I’m not being as kind as I could but I had a rough night last night hah).

So here are the rules:- By voting in the Brand Battle, you are opting into the AlwaysUrban.com email list. Expect results and a pile of other emails to boot in your inbox?

Vote For Your Favourite Brand
You must enter a valid email
You only get to vote once
Voting ends 03 / 16 / 09

So let’s take a look at the tees AUB featured to entice you to vote…

Starlet at Bad As Hell Clothing by a.mar.illo

Wow, wow, wow, arooga. I feel like a wolf from an old Tex Avery toon, this tee is hot to trot, totally fine retro work, very very slick illustration, I’d be gutted if I found out this was ripped from an old book plate, it really is very very well conceived. I can’t read the slogan but I’m sure it’s either in Latin, Italian, or something sexy like that. If it isn’t, if it says something lame, well then I’ll have to retract my prior statement. Still very very hot! Nice tones too. You can buy Starlet by a.mar.illo here. A.mar.illo has done a few tees already, you may know this one called Surabaya Johnny which is a very strange kettle of fish, based on the city of the artist and looking like something out of an old war comic on acid, this guy definitely has a future! BTW he says it’s based on an old Kurt Weill song.

Column Tee (Women’s) at Breathe On Apparel

Erm, right. Yep the image is a little small so I’d work on making the store a little more accessible first. Most of the tees featured by BOA at AUB aren’t available anymore this was the only one I could find – Column Tee. I should really hand this part of the review over to Chris (but she’s not here right now), so hmm. Well it’s light blue, smothered in logo graphics, and essentially is a walking advert for the brand. I never get why t-shirt designers think that people want to wear this kind of thing, I mean, you know when you see guys walking along the road wearing a sandwich board advertising a sale on at a local store, or cheap food at Greasy Joes, I mean they get paid to do that right? If this was a free tee it would be a great idea, the sort you get thrown at you on a corporate training weekend, or when your manager is having a stockroom clear out. But really, I get it, the company is called Breathe On Apparel, and there it is all over the shirt. Hmm. Anyway if you’d like to provide some free advertising space to this label and pay for the honour, click here.

Pee Tee by Someone Clothing

OMG this shirt rules, it’s like a Banksy in the making. If you’re going to include your logo, this is the way to do it. Conceptually this is a winner, although I don’t know if I’d have the guts to wear it. I really think they need a women’s version, she could be squatting in a skirt just to make it tasteful hah, still, amazing. It’s available in a selection of colours like banana and blue, cream and brown, black and white, but all the pics on the site are in b/w – arty but not too helpful. I can’t slate these guys though, their site is simple as it gets but yet they’ve managed to make it a total head trip to visit, I mean you know, weird, and I love weird. Duh. Of course I do, most of the tees I lavish praise on are for weirdos, but this one must be the king of bizarro world, I mean, calling it pee, the pee tee, that has to be some kind of twisted genius. Graffiti tees, that’s what I’d have called the label, but yes that’s too literal, still, it’s like wearing a stencil from the an NYC Subway carriage door. Cool, cooler than cool. Frozen.

Model Chick at Syditty Clothing

Well, I am sure they have some amazing tees for girls at Syditty Clothing, BUT, what is up with women’s tee designers? Are they all using the same photographer? This image and all their store images are so small that I am starting to think that either:
a) Women have far better eyesight than men.
b) It’s some kind of “tasteful presentation” thing that eludes me, completely.
If you’ve spent all that time and effort proving your genius at vector design, let the world know about it! Slap up some enormous photos of your t-shirts, I even looked up Syditty on Flickr but nothing, nowt, nada, zip. Damn. Anyway I think, but I am not sure, but I think that this label has some rocking tees for women, but I really can’t tell.

So there you have it, a completely biased round-up. Essentially I’d like Someone Clothing to win. Why?

There work is challenging and way out there. Plus, even though Bad As Hell Clothing has some sexy tees, they are more of a platform for designers (who hardly even acknowledge my efforts at raising awareness of their label). Someone Clothing need a boost. I am sure that once I’ve raved about Someone Clothing until I’m frothing at the mouth they’ll appreciate it, and maybe even link back here, hey I have to promote this blog somehow. Anyway, Someone Clothing is my first choice, then BAHC, then Syditty, and at the bottom of the pile BOA. But will I actually vote? Well, no, I’m not handing out my email address to another mailing list, my inbox is clogged up as it is hah. Okay I need food, a bath, a kip, and yes I promise the next post will be much less grisly lol.

I gave www.iwearyourshirt.com a plug a while back, I thought the idea sounded good, and wanted to promote my graffiti art but after using Jason Sadler’s service I am not impressed at all. Luckily I booked the service rather early and managed to get it for around the $50 mark (although I had to splash out on a t-shirt as well). After a lot of negotiations and a second reprint of the t-shirt as he refused to wear the first which features one of my more controversial works, he finally refunded me the costs of the first t-shirt and I sent another.

That was the first problem, he, or rather Evan White PR, who seems to be pulling all the strings over there, as in getting the site and service as much publicity as possible, raved about my art and how much they loved it. There was no mention of how they’d refuse to promote anything controversial, which in essence my artwork is, there’s no getting around that. In fact from the word go I’d have appreciated it if they’d just pulled out there and then and said, “hey, your graffiti art is too controversial, we’re not touching it!”. But no, they still urged me to send another t-shirt and then sit and wait a few months for the outcome.

Now if that wasn’t bad enough they also promised to contact me before the date, the day that Jason would be “heavily promoting” my art, a consultation, an interview, getting a “feel” for what I do, discussing a few options for “getting the word out there”. I have at least a few emails where they mentioned that most of what they receive is rather boring and that they were psyched about promoting something more exciting for once, and yet as the date approached nothing happened. No email, no call, no apology for not contacting me, nothing.

The day came, the 22nd of February, and I wouldn’t have noticed except I’m following them or rather was following them on Twitter, but anyway to the point, and that is that for the money I’d spent I got:-

A mention in their blog.
One single Tweet.
One photo on Flickr.
A video on Youtube. What’s worse Jason spends most of the video drawing Garfield The Cat rather than actually talking about my work, why? Because he never contacted me for a back story!

Basically the traffic brought in by IWYS is negligible, and seeing as it will cost you $270 to get the same service in September (if that particular slot hasn’t been booked) I’d truly advise against it. I’ve seen guys at Digital Point forums offer half a million YouTube hits for $600, make your own video, wear you own t-shirt, talk about your product and don’t waste time and money like I did.

If you own a website or blog and know your readers would appreciate a discount or two like this one:-

Then hop on over to the affiliate application form here, or if you’re a member of Commission Junction you can simply login and search for “UneeTEE” and sign up to their program from there, either way get yourself some link and banner codes and slip a few of them into your blog or site and keep your fingers crossed, who knows you may qualify for a free iTouch – which is essentially Apple’s latest and fanciest schmanciest iPod incase you weren’t aware.

Here’s what UneeTEE have to say about the promotion:-

“Double your February’s referred sales to UneeTEE and win a brand new iTOUCH! Double the volume of sales you referred to UneeTEE in February during the month of March and get a chance to win a brand new Apple iTOUCH to help you relax after a hard month’s work. All you have to do is to give it a push throughout the month of March and once the number is doubled you have a chance to win a brand new Apple iTOUCH – on top of all those well deserved commission bucks! This promotion applies to all joined affiliates on all commission offers. The winner will be announced on or before April 10, 2009. Consolation Prizes would also be awarded. You need to refer at least 10 sales transactions this March to UneeTEE in order to be eligible for the raffle draw”

Now if you’ve never promoted the site before you’ll (only) need to hit 10 sales, if you can manage that you’ll be in for a healthy profit and a chance at winning an iTouch. Not bad eh?

If you don’t have a blog or site and would rather just save a few dollars at the checkout just click the banner above. In case you’re wondering, no Commission Junction don’t offer a referral program for their site, you can make a little cash from sales of their advertisers’ products but nothing from other affiliates – which isn’t the greatest deal in the world – still as I said – we leave the marketing to the experts and stick to what we’re good at, writing t-shirt reviews ;)

Now I’m assured that they will be promoting the site big time over the next few months, and if it pays off then everyone’s a winner. Remember it is a free directory and so it won’t do any harm adding a listing or two I’m sure. Although I’m not a fan of the design of the site, the layout and graphics are rather cluttered – however Ashley from TSI has assured me they are quickly working on a revamp!

I must admit they’re extremely responsive to criticism, Ashley is open to ideas and responsive to any suggestions you might have, they want to make TSI the leader in its field and we at Buy-Tees.net wish them all the best in their new venture!

What TSI do offer are a heck of a lot of t-shirt categories…

Animal Art & Photography Attitude Automotive Branded Country Cartoon & Comic Computer DIY Football Fashion Gaming Gay & Lesbian Goth Holiday Humour Hobby Indie Music Offensive Political Retro Sports Valentine Vintage Supplier & Services martial art t-shirts T-shirt Printers Organic Tees Campaign Tees Stag & Hen Tees

If you fancy adding your own resource then suggest a listing here.

If you can’t find a category to suit you then suggest one here.

Here’s a few other t-shirt directories worth adding your links to whilst you’re at it – there’s no guarantees that you’ll be flooded with traffic from directories of this sort but what I can tell you is the more links pointing to your site the better, especially if they’re t-shirt related!

t-shirtlinks.com

t-shirt-directory.com

tshirtprinter.org

Now I don’t normally put the terms “genius” and “marketing” together in the same sentence, but if you’re after something a little different, no matter what your business, t-shirt related or not, here’s something out of the ordinary for you. Essentially Jason Sadler of Iwearyourshirt.com is renting out the upper-half of his body for the next year. You will be disappointed to find out that just about every day for next January (2009) has been sold out, and in a moment you’ll understand exactly why.

The beauty of Jason’s idea is simplicity, unlike the awful multi-level marketing scheme EyeEarn.com (I won’t even link to it :/) which seems to have a master plan of forcing the world to wear it’s grotty logo, yes everyone, the same shirt, (isn’t that more communist than capitalist?), Jason is prepared to do the modelling and marketing for you.

There are two reasons why I’m bandying around the word genius here, the fact is that both of them will in all honesty benefit him more than anyone else. I slog away at reviews and news here at Buy Tees and half the time I’ll be lucky to receive a mere “thanks” let alone any freebies, not that I ask mind you. Jason on the other hand will be filling his wardrobe with 365 t-shirts over the next year, everyone of them free, and he’ll be paid for the privilege! His fees will increment day-by-day to a whopping $365 for wearing your t-shirt on the 31st of January 2009. At first I had my suspicions, who would want to pay so much or so little? Then I took a look at his site and saw that he’s practically sold out his first month, yes they’re the cheapest rates snapped up for starters, and he’ll be marketing the lucky advertisers all over the net just to make sure they get the coverage they deserve.

If you book a day with Jason and mail him your shirt (size: X-Large – he’s a big lad) your tee will get exposure at…

• Daily Video on YouTube & Ustream.tv
• Daily Photos on the blog & Flickr
• Daily Posts on the blog & Twitter
• Calendar (You/Your Company’s Logo & Website)
• All of these with Jason wearing your shirt and information about you, your company and/or your product.

It doesn’t even stop there, the more reebies you send him the more exposure you will get, such as “other items of clothing, your company branded stress ball or even your custom bedazzled iPhone case!” He’s even willing to visit you at your business (I presume if you pay his expenses), and he’ll even bring his video camera and document the entire trip.

Right now Jason isn’t famous, as he openly admits he’s no rock star or athlete, but as he states at IWYS – he does have a passion for marketing, and you will probably realise for yourself once this spreads around the net. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Jason at iwearyourshirt@gmail.com. What you need to understand is that this is viral marketing gone haywire, within a year this man will probably have the attention of worldwide news networks, not that he’s promising anything of the sort, it’s just so newsworthy I’d be surprised if he doesn’t find himself doing at least a few interviews for the ‘wackier stories’ sections of Fox or MTV news in 2009.

Anyway get yourself down there if you want to take a punt on this, it could be big! Plus I’ve just heard that Jason’s friend Evan of www.EvanWhitePR.com is talking with The Today Show now, if that happens it makes the cost of advertising back that same day and way more!

Of course the cheques bounce, and if you’re really unlucky they can even clear out your bank account. So like I say don’t ever answer emails like this one :

HELLO,MY NAME IS SIR ALEXANDRA COSTA, AM AN ITALIAN BUSINESS MAN. I DEALS WITH IMPORTING AND EXPORTINGS FOREIGN GOODS, SO I WILL LIKE YOU TO PLEASE GET BACK TO ME WITH PRODUCT YOU HAVE IN STOCK AS AT NOW. I WILL ALSO WANT YOU TO GET BACK TO ME WITH YOUR PRICE FOR EACH WITH THE DISCOUNT YOU CAN GIVE ME ON EACH PRODUCT, AND AS REGARDING THE PAYMENT METHODS WILL BE DISCUSS DURING THE TRANSACTION.

I HAVE MANY BRANCHES WORLD WIDE, SO JUST WANT TO ESTABLISH ANOTHER BRANCH IN AFRICA,SO I DECIDED TO USE NIGERIA AS THE HEAD QUATER SO I WANT YOU TO GET BACK TO ME WITH THE SHIPPING COST TO MY BRANCH ADDRESS IN NIGERIA GET BACK TO ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SO THAT I CAN KNOW WHAT AM GOING TO DO WITH YOUR TRANSACTION,AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I NEED TO GET THIS ORDER AS SOON AS YOU GET THE PAYMENT,HOPE TO READ FROM YOU ASAP. REGARDS ALEXANDRA.

Email him (at his free email address) anonymously for a laugh if you want (and join me on the run from Nigeria’s equivalent of the Mafia) at: sales@avafx.com

He’d actually written his demands in bold for extra headache inducing impact, but at least it wasn’t typed in a bright red which some of these scammers like to do. Nice touch mentioning he’s Italian, perhaps Alexandra does hail from Italy, but apparently he neither has a surname, phone number or business address. What’s even funnier is that Alexandra is actually a woman’s name, but I won’t hold his vague sexuality against him.

Now i don’t run an independent t-shirt store (anymore) but even if I did I can’t understand why Alexandra the transsexual t-shirt mogul of Nigeria would think I’d take him seriously, or at least not without a very very hefty down payment (probably for more than I’d actually charge just as compensation for the frightening email).

The fact is there’s most likely no one in Nigeria selling independent underground label t-shirts, the import duties must be extortionate, let alone all those back handers to corrupt government officials. I’m more likely to send some t-shirts to Oxfam than Alexandra. Ah well there you go. This maybe a light hearted post but take it seriously, a lot of brand new independent t-shirt stores, printers and suppliers have been caught out by these scammers over the years. Let’s hope those venturing into the industry have been duly warned.

Anyway what makes me laugh is, apart from the bad English, is the fact that most of these spammers don’t even check out my blog, they just read the word t-shirt and assume I’m in the market for importing a few thousand tees from, where is it this time, oh Hong Kong , oh no the name mentions Hong Kong but they say they are a Chinese supplier.

Anyway my point is spammer or not, I’m not in the market for buying/importing/printing a truck load of tees, so please take my email off your list and move along.

Thanks

Paul

Anyway read this…

Here’s the standard bumpf email I received:-

Your StumbleUpon account privileges have been restricted and the account is under review.

Accounts are placed under review for breaching our Terms of Service, which may be found here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms.html

The most common cause for account suspension is a contravention of the clauses which forbid the use of personal accounts for the promotion of a business, product or service, and also with regard to the sending of ‘spam’ messages to other members.

If you wish to appeal this suspension, having first reviewed the TOS, then you may contact us here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/feedback.php but be aware that we will only have imposed the suspension if we believe it to be warranted.

This is nonsense – god knows what Stumble think they’re doing, ah well I’m sure it never brought me very much traffic anyway, I rely more on word of mouth and recommendation from t-shirt fans and designers, but still, who the hell do Stumbleupon think they are? The Third Reich of Social Social Bookmarking?

At least they didn’t sent around the SU’s with jackboots and Luger’s to take me away for interrogation. All hail the new oligarchy, the self-appointed emperors of taste and fashion. It makes me sick when massive corporations feel they can play judge and jury on one blog to the next. I’ts not as if I’m trying to sell you penis enlargement pills, or money making chainletter programs, deary me, what has the world come to when some spotty trumped up jerk from a backwater town can slam anyone they wish, no matter how worthy the cause or creative the output. IF they want to know who’s spamming Stumbleupon should take a closer look at their whole organisation – these guys have pages upon pages of useless empty accounts with nothing but money making blogs and dumb ass business drivel that swears on the next link you’ll make a million bucks.

I don’t know if Stumbleupon.com have heard of freedom of expression, or the US constitution, or the European Court of Human Rights, but if I gave a flying toss I’d be teaching them a lesson or two right now. Instead I’ll be British about it and surreptitiously stick two fingers up to yet another faceless bland corporation and get on with life. It’s sunny outside, yes it’s blowing a force 8 gale, but it’s sunny and I really should connect a little more with what really matters, a beer on the beach and throwing pebbles on te shore.

Conclusion, if you want to promote your t-shirts never ever ever bother with Stumbleupon.com, tell your friends and even your enemies, Stumbleupon is a massive waste of time, a pointless exercise in futility run by a bunch of jumped up idiots who cover their ears whenever a sensible argument passes them by.